


Mechanics, Malboros, & Other Misadventures

by JazzRaft



Series: Dark at Night [31]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Humor, M/M, Mild Language, Needles, Poisoning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-02 09:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10214222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: A series of unfortunate events that befall our fearless heroes on their quest across Eos. 'Thank the Six we survived' smooches may or may not be applied, pending severity of injury.





	1. multi-purpose mechanic

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [ tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/156996388367/noctnyx-for-44-ive-fallen-into-this-pairing) for #44 in [this prompt post.](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/156511645930/send-me-a-pairing-and-a-number-and-ill-write-you)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> when all else fails, get your ass to hammerhead.

“If you die, I’m gonna kill you!”

Well, if that wasn’t incentive enough to stay alive, Nyx didn’t know what was. He’d seen Noctis break a man’s neck between his thighs once; he would rather prefer not to meet a similar fate. He’d prefer not to meet any fate whatsoever today, but whatever the hell was burning through his veins right now was screaming to the contrary.

“We’re outta antidotes!” he heard Prompto squeak, bottles clinking together as he frantically searched the canvas bag. “I _told_ you we should have shopped at that last gas station.”

“Not. Now.”

Ignis’s words were clipped, but losing their cool as he failed to bring down Nyx’s fever. The back seat of the Regalia was more crowded than it had ever been, Nyx sprawled across both seats, trying not to flail too much when the poison stabbed through his muscles. He was afraid if he did, he’d kick Prompto right off the back of the car from where he was kneeling into the trunk by his legs, tearing through all of their limited belongings for something that might be useful. Ignis was on the car floor next to him, behind the driver’s seat where Gladio was gunning it at the wheel. Emptied potions surrounded him and he was dumping bottled water onto a towel that he kept pressing to Nyx’s throat in an effort to calm his pulse.

And Noctis was twisted halfway around in the passenger seat, his head whipping back and forth from the messy medical situation in the back to the road ahead, waiting for civilization to twinkle on the horizon. Being poisoned was usually something they could all tough out if they were low on antidotes. A little nausea and fatigue for a while, but eventually it sweated itself out of your system. Whatever the hell had been on that last monster’s claws though…

“Fuck!” Nyx shouted as an acute pain shot through him like a razor. His knee jerked into Prompto’s back and nearly knocked the wind out of the poor kid. “Shiva’s giant, frigid tits!”

“He can’t be that far-gone if he’s cursing like that, right?” Gladio said, trying to put a positive spin on Nyx’s current state of distress.

“Can’t you drive this thing any faster?” Noctis yelled at him instead.

Gladio grumbled something in reply, but Nyx didn’t notice any change in acceleration. If the sharp sound of the air biting past them was any indicator, they were going as fast as the old girl could manage. The velocity was not helping how horrendous his stomach was already feeling, clenched up with pain and desperate to expel whatever offending element was piercing through his veins. Gods, if he threw up in the King’s car, this poison damn well better kill him before Noctis did. He groaned against the awful feeling, clenching his fists to will his body to hold out. He was about to tell himself that he’d had worse… but he really wasn’t too sure about that the longer it went on.

Noctis paled and reached back to take Nyx’s fist in both of his hands, kneading frenzied fingers between his tight knuckles.

“You’re gonna be fine…” he said, but it wasn’t Nyx he was trying to convince.

“’Course I’m gonna be fine,” Nyx wheezed, swallowing the taste of bile before forcing a quavering smirk on his face. “With your handsome face lookin’ out for me? I like my chances.”

“Even at death’s door, you’re both still gross,” Gladio sighed.

“Don’t even joke, Gladio,” Noctis said in a small voice, managing to smile at Nyx, regardless.

Hammerhead appeared ahead of the windshield. The sight of its shark-shaped rooftop sparked a litany of questions in Nyx’s head that Noctis helpfully asked. Why Hammerhead? Because it was closest. What are they gonna do? Dunno, maybe Cid can help. You can’t be serious?

Nyx was starting to not like the chances of him surviving this thing anymore. The people at Hammerhead fixed cars and diner food. Who the hell there was going to know how to fix a person?

“You got a better idea?” Gladiolus barked at Noctis.

That quickly halted his stream of Nyx’s mentally transmitted questions. They pulled into Cindy’s garage honking. Prompto clamored out of the backseat first to run ahead and find someone to help while Ignis and Gladiolus dragged Nyx onto his feet. The world spun around Nyx’s head like cartoon stars as the prince’s retainers slung one of his arms over each of their shoulders and hustled into the building. Noctis darted ahead to open doors or move obstacles for them, desperate to feel like he was doing something useful, but completely out of his element.

Nyx had a vague impression of being dropped onto a soft surface in a room he only half-recognized between the blurring edges of his vision. At some point, Prompto reappeared, dragging a cranky Cid in to growl and curse at the state of the feverish glaive. He said something that got muffled under the loud throbbing in Nyx’s ears.

Noctis appeared in and out of Nyx’s vision, his presence the only motivation Nyx had to keep his eyes open. The prince offered halfway hysteric comforts for the both of them, the intention behind the words skewed by the panic in Noctis’s voice. He kept telling Nyx, over and over again, that he was “going to be fine” and Nyx really wished he would hurry up and get to being fine, if only so that Noctis wasn’t bunched up into such a tight knot of anxiety he was afraid he might implode on himself.

There was a shuffle by the door and a couple alarmed explanations before Noctis was forcibly removed from Nyx’s side. He vaguely recognized Cindy’s blond curls bobbing over him before a hand was braced against his knee and something sharp was suddenly plunged into his thigh.

“There ya’ll are,” Cindy yawned. “That should get ya ticking right again in no time.”

It took a few minutes before Nyx felt his heart-rate begin to steady. The pain gradually subsided in easy rolls and his blood started to cool so his insides didn’t feel like the core of Ravatogh anymore. He blinked sweat and smudginess from his eyes, enough to get a read of the room. Cid and Cindy were in their pajamas, an empty syringe in Cindy’s curled palm at her hip.

“The hell was that?” he asked, breath coming in an amazed sigh.

“Just a super remedy in case of emergency,” Cindy replied, as chipper in the dead of night with bags under her eyes as she was in the day with a full tank of sleep.

“It seems that once again we are in your debt,” Ignis said, bowing his head in gratitude. “Our thanks, Ms. Aurum.”

“Wasn’t about to let ya’ll peter out on Paw’s favorite couch,” she laughed. “Ya’ll be needin’ anything else?”

A series of apologies, admiration, and disgruntled apathy from Cid siphoned out of the room, leaving Nyx to breathe evenly up at the ceiling and enjoy the lumpy feeling of the couch at his back rather than the fire in his bloodstream. Noctis’s hand fit into his unclenched fist, the prince sitting on the floor next to him and searching his face for the threat of any more symptoms.

“Believe it or not,” Nyx said around the dryness in his throat. “That was not the first time a woman came at me with a sharp object.”

Noctis snorted and batted his shoulder, drained from worry. His hand was still shaking a little as he reached forward to clear some errant strands of hair from Nyx’s sweat-stained forehead.

“Never thought I’d be grateful for Cindy stabbing you.”

“After this, I think I’d let that girl drive an eighteen-wheeler over me if she asked.”


	2. malignant malboros

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> their breath stinks, and not just in smell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/159772810497/quiet-they-can-hear-us-for-nyxnoct-please) for an anonymous request from [this prompt post.](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/159638211212/five-word-prompts) Also, by extension, filling a request from AO3 commenter "Snow" for Nyx treating a poisoned Noct.

“Quiet. They can hear us.”

Noctis gulped down on a groan as another wave of nausea passed through him. It rolled up from his stomach to burn at the bottom of his throat, and for one horrible moment he feared he was going to throw up on Nyx. But he managed to force away the feeling of bile on his tongue, clamping his teeth down to contain the pained sounds that threatened to expose them. He could see the long, undulating tentacles of the malboros slithering past at the corner of his eye.

Their breath had cleaved through the five of them, knocked them all off their feet, and separated them in a grotesque green fog. It had burned Noctis’s eyes, rushed into his lungs, and tilted his vision until his knees met the swampy water underfoot. The world lurched with his stomach and he had to lean on the hilt of his sword to keep himself from falling face-first into the swamp. He searched frantically through the fog for his friends, only to be met with a shadow colliding into him and dumping him back into the brush at the edge of the water.

Nyx pressed him to the wet earth, his eyes like silver lanterns in Noctis’s fuzzy vision. The poison started to burn then, scalding through his veins in steady pulses, hurting worse and worse after every pass. It shocked through his body until his limbs numbed themselves to the pain. Until he could barely feel Nyx on top of him, worry bleeding through the man's eyes and hurried whispers pleading for him to be quiet, that they could only get out of this if they stayed low and waited for them to lose interest.

“Shh, baby, I know it hurts, but please…”

Noctis heard a nearby hiss beyond the pounding in his ears. He barely had enough sense to clasp a hand over his mouth and bite into his glove to contain the sharp burst of pain that swelled through him. He squeezed his eyes shut, knees involuntarily clenching into Nyx’s sides, desperate for an anchor to pull him from the pain. He could hear the rippling of the water beyond the foliage next to them. He could feel Nyx bracing above him, one hand pushed into Noct's shoulder, squeezing an unconscious comfort, and the other silently raised to call his kukri should they be discovered.

The poison overwhelmed Noctis, and he was almost grateful for the numbness in his hands so he couldn’t feel how hard he bit into it to keep himself from crying out. He watched Nyx’s lips move, mouthing the word “easy” to him as they waited for the suspicious malboro to pass. It was agony and an eternity until the only noise that assailed Noctis’s ears was his own blood beating through his skull.

The instant the beasts were clear, Nyx was moving over him and Noctis was gasping against the pain. He cursed and writhed and tried not to kick Nyx as his heels dragged through the muck as if they were trying to move his body away from the pain.

“ _Fuck_ , why does this hurt so much?” Noctis wheezed, arms wrapping around himself and clawing at his stomach. “This should _not_ hurt this much.”

“Easy, Noct,” Nyx said as Noctis curled onto his side and groaned. “Just breathe, you’re gonna be fine.”

“I know that, but it definitely doesn’t feel like it _right now_.”

He whined into the mud, fingers digging into the sloppy earth, clawing for _something_ , _anything_ that would make it go away. Nyx’s hands were patting through his own pockets before probing through Noctis’s, swearing when he found them both lacking any antidotes. The glaive cast his gaze out to the waters, hands coming to drag comfortingly through Noctis’s hair.

“I think Iggy has the last of the antidotes,” Nyx told him, squinting across the lake in search of wherever their friends may have been hiding.

“Then, you better go find him,” Noctis hissed.

“I don’t want to leave you…”

Between the contractions of pain, Noctis shot his hands up into Nyx’s shirt and pulled him to his face, glaring into his startled eyes.

“I swear to the Six, Nyx, if you don’t get your ass out there and find Iggy, you’re not getting laid for the rest of the month.”

Another roll of agony crested through him and Noctis craned his head forward to bite the fabric of Nyx’s shirt to keep himself from screaming. He liked to think that the flutter of panic in the man’s eyes was due to Noctis’s threat so, he let the pain delude him into thinking that it was.

“Okay, okay, don’t move, alright? I’ll be right back.”

Nyx pressed a hasty kiss to his forehead before bolting back out into the lake. Noctis buried his face into the soil, hating everything. He hated the pins and needles in his hands and feet, hated the feeling of his shirt plastering itself to his back with sweat and swamp water, hated the taste of wet dirt in his mouth, and the gooiness of it beneath his fingernails as he clawed for some kind of purchase.

Nyx reappeared in a splash of more gross water against his legs and cracked an antidote over him. The magic settled over his skin and then sunk in, racing to catch the poison and lashing it away. A slow, cool burn that brought feeling back to his fingers and clarity back to his eyes. Noctis gasped in relief, long, heaving gulps of air as the concoction worked through him. He laid in the sensation for a moment, coveting the weightless feeling as he was brought back from the weightiness of the pain.

Then, he felt Nyx’s hands on him again, fretting through his hair, down his face, along his shoulders and his chest and everywhere that his own nails had dug into in his agony. Noctis tilted his face into the touches, whimpering in relief.

“Thanks, hero,” he said, voice rough. “You get ‘thank the gods we’re still alive sex.’ Once we’re not so gross. Promise.”

Nyx’s throaty chuckle was a relief to the dulling ache in his ears. The hot shower he shared with him at the next motel, even better.


	3. man of the hour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ignis and nyx learn the values of deadly dagger precision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/160424999967/nyxnoct-nyx-finally-getting-to-see-why-ignis-is) for an anonymous request.

“Are you guys good?” Noctis asked one day.

Nyx glanced over at him, following his gaze towards Ignis ahead of them. The prince had finally deferred to his friend’s better directional skills after being convinced that he had, in fact, been walking them past the same rock formation for the better half of an hour.

“Me and Specs? Yeah, of course we’re good. Why?”

Noctis nibbled his lip in that adorably fretful way that Nyx loved so much. His eyes darted between the two of them, searching for something that he was sure was there, but wasn’t certain he should find.

“I dunno,” he finally said, shrugging. “You guys have seemed a little tense around each other.”

“I don’t know how to break it to you, babe, but we’ve always been like that.”

Nyx hadn’t really met Ignis for more than a few minutes at a time before he started secreting Noctis out from under him. He was familiar with his reputation as the prince’s advisor, but beyond that, they could hardly be qualified as passing acquaintances. The little Nyx had known of him had merited more eye-rolls than admiration.

The picture of propriety, Ignis was the smoothly cut shadow that straightened Noct’s posture, guided his hands towards the right silverware, and taught him how to lie his way through a dignitary’s smile. It was a common sight around the Citadel, when Nyx was stationed on guard duty there, for the prince and his advisor to be rushing from hall to hall, juggling papers and articles of expensive clothing and, one time, carpet swatches.

Once Noctis started occupying Nyx’s apartment more often, he would get the occasional tirade about what a torture Ignis could be. Around the outstanding horror stories though, the most Noctis ever talked about him was in a fond regard. A reserved respect cultivated from being raised their whole lives together.

Nyx often joked that he was envious of the man, stealing so much of Noctis’s time from him. And while they were together, hiding from Ignis and everyone else, a strangely playful hostility had grown in Nyx towards the man. Sometimes, it was a challenge to sneak Noctis away from him, and when it was, Nyx took to it like a hero liberating a captive from his villain. An on-and-off, unwitting antagonist to their story that could make Nyx smile in unseen victory on particularly spectacular nights he got to keep Noctis buried in his bed.

It was a private, silent game Nyx played in his head. One that he didn’t let warp Ignis’s character in actuality. The man wasn’t a tyrant. Noctis’s regard for him was proof enough of that. And if he had Noctis’s adoration, he had Nyx’s respect. Nevertheless, Nyx’s acquaintance with Ignis was… curt, at best. For no reason other than that they just didn’t seem to click. And while Ignis had taken the revelation that Nyx had been seeing Noct in secret for over a year gracefully, there was still a touch of bitterness for not being trusted enough to keep that secret.

Nevertheless, they maintained a working relationship since setting out from Lestallum. Wholly committed to keeping Noctis safe. On that, they matched as perfectly as a pair of daggers. On the rest, not so much.

They tolerated each other.

For Noct’s sake.

“Okay,” Noctis said after a few steps of silence. “I get it, I won’t force you to like each other.”

“I don’t _not_ like him, Noct. I’m just…” Nyx made a vague gesture with his hands, groping at empty air for some kind of answer. “Bored by him?”

Noctis snorted in laughter, bringing the back of his hand to his lips. Like he was laughing at a secret. The one secret Nyx did _not_ know about him. Nyx narrowed a glance at him, inching a little closer to bump his hip into his.

“Got a punchline to go with that laugh, little king?”

“Not one that I can deliver,” Noctis chuckled. “But if you knew Iggy, _really_ knew Iggy, you’d know he was the furthest thing from boring.”

After that, Nyx was _determined_. Noctis had piqued his interest in the longest standing fixture of the prince’s retinue. He was adamant about finding out what could be so interesting about him that it was hilarious that Nyx thought he was anything but.

A few days passed of Nyx intensely observing the other man’s habits. And nearly falling asleep. Because Ignis was so _mundane_. He woke up early. Same time Nyx did. He put on coffee. Poured himself coffee. Said good morning to Nyx. Started breakfast. Passed plates of breakfast to each person that woke up. Recited the itinerary for the day. They drove to a town. They drove precisely at the speed limit. They bought only what they needed when they reached a town. They drove again. The sun set. They made camp. Had dinner. Slept.

 _Boring_.

It wasn’t until they were assaulted by the first Niflheim airship since Nyx had joined their party that the glaive finally got a taste of where Noctis’s admiration for the man came from.

Ignis was a self-contained explosion in close-quarters combat.

The beasts they’d run into on the road so far had either been so menial as to barely call forth any effort into slaying them, or so monstrous that they debilitated every one of them before they could get a single hit in.

But MTs were an even trade. And Nyx got to see Ignis for more than the looming tailored shirt that haunted Noctis’s every step. The second his daggers set in his hands, Ignis turned into the most elegant _monster._ While still a nearby shadow to Noct’s harried warp-strikes, Ignis was calculated, controlled, and impaled MT bodies with deadly precision. He slipped between sparking, screaming bodies like an oil slick. Quick, clean movements; his body as sharp as his blades. Swift, _stylish_ arcs, no motion unnecessary.

He moved where Noctis moved. Like all of them did. All of them operating out of orbit from the king. Like one of his own swords, constantly at hand and spinning around him to slice through the enemies that Noctis had his back to. An extension of his armiger, faithful and eternal. And a lethal arm to wield.

“Ulric! Duck!”

Nyx snapped down into a crouch, more than a decade of working on switch-board orders in the field ingrained in his bones. He heard a hiss and a bump and a horrible metallic wail. When he looked up and behind him, there was an MT lurching backwards with a polished Lucian dagger embedded in his chest. Nyx jerked it from the metal body, turning to find Ignis across the field.

He met the man’s sharp gaze, smirking himself at the confident nod he got from him. Nyx aimed a kukri and warped over to meet him, pressing Ignis’s dagger into his open palm and flashing into the next MT in one fluid motion.

They paired off after that, dealing deft dagger strikes to the soulless battalion until the plains of Duscae were littered in twitching limbs dissolving into the night.

“And here I was beginning to think those were just for show,” Nyx teased as Ignis let his daggers fall back into their invisible container.

“And here I was beginning to think your exploits were just children’s stories,” Ignis countered, quietly, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Nyx grinned, catching the sly twitch of his lips beneath his hand. He saw Noctis glancing their way from where he was helping Prompto to his feet, a small, hopeful smile on his face. Yeah, okay. Nyx could get behind this.

Nothing like a hot-blooded battle to save your own life to prove a man’s integrity.


	4. melting on missteps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> greyshire glacial grotto is more than just a mouthful.

“Watch your step.”

Nyx – sweet, gallant Nyx with his cocksure smile and a dwindling concept of subtlety – swept a hand up for Noctis to take like a storybook knight to his liege-lady. Noctis rolled his eyes. He gripped his hand as hard as he would a sword hilt, pressing roughly against his palm to haul himself through the narrow incline. Nyx blinked and pouted at him as he passed for the lack of delicacy he was hoping to be indulged with.

“Not in front of the guys,” Noctis murmured in his ear, patting his shoulder.

“Why?” Nyx chuckled. “As if we have anything to hide.”

In spite of how horrific and tragic the circumstances were behind them finally admitting their relationship to Noct’s friends, Nyx was enjoying the freedom. He was making the most out of an impossibly horrible situation, taking advantage of the fact that he could walk a little closer to Noctis, keep an arm around him as they trotted through the wilds, and watch him without worrying over how his long, anxious glances might be interpreted by the more astute members of their party. Nyx had been on the cusp of death – maybe even beyond the edge of it. He wasn’t afraid of anything after that. Especially not of holding Noct’s hand where all the world could see.

It was hard not to feel cherished by the open attention, something they’d often dreamed about together – of not having to think about how prying eyes might ostracize them, of being able to share their love without fear of contempt. Noctis only wished that this freedom didn’t come at the cost of his kingdom. He tried not to let himself feel guilty, especially not since Ignis had advised him – more friend than retainer in the companionable glow of the campfire – that he was entitled to take his joys where he could. They all were. It made them stronger for the trials that awaited them ahead.

“Don’t let your grief destroy you,” Ignis had told him. “No one will begrudge you your happiness, Noct. It’s all any of us want for each other now.”

He was still getting used to that. He was still getting used to the idea that he could link his hand through Nyx’s and not be resented for it. That maybe the easy affection between them could be a salve instead of an infection of an envy between the five of them. It was something they were all working on: Prompto with his pictures, Gladio with his relief that Iris made it out of the city alive when no one else did, Ignis with his recipes and his resolve to find joy in the little things.

They all had a long way to go in their collective recovery.

Ice was an effective agent for just that.

The cave grew colder the further they crept into the dark maw behind the waterfall. Flashlights sparked against a growing film of frost, reaching for them from the throat of the cavern. Noctis’s teeth chattered against his will, hands rising to rub against his elbows. The temperature dropped quickly and dramatically and he _so_ wasn’t prepared for it.

“Going for those frosted tips?” Nyx teased, passing a hand over the soft tufts of his hair.

Gladio chuckled from behind them. “Whatever you guys put in your hair, it’s gonna be frozen that way for days.”

“Dude! Don’t even joke!” Prompto squeaked, hands flying up to pat at his head and keep the style from permanently stiffening.

“I don’t know that it’d be such a bad thing,” Ignis said, brushing a hand through his own skyward style. “One less vanity to worry about fixing up in the mornings if it’s stuck this way.”

“There is _no way_ that frozen follicles can be healthy! Is that seriously a thing?”

“They’re both full of shit,” Noctis assured him, bumping a shoulder into Nyx for laughing and throwing a glare back at Gladio. “And with _that_ hair, do you really think they know what they’re talking about?”

“Ouch! I think someone’s just jealous of this glorious mane.” Nyx tossed a braid over his shoulder like a lustrously shampooed super-model grinning off a billboard.

Gladio snorted and Ignis made a sound that he was pretending wasn’t a laugh. Prompto trotted up on Noct’s other side to shoot a glare at Nyx, lower lip pouting out at being so cruelly teased. “Noct, where the heck do you find these people?”

“Same place I found you.”

They needed the laughter, if not to warm them from the escalating chill then to take some of weight off of the gravity their journey now entailed. In hindsight, he probably should have kept some of that weight. Maybe it would have kept his steps heavy enough to notice the sudden lack of stone beneath them.

One second, Noctis was being volleyed between his boyfriend and his best friend, the next, a lurch of vertigo and the glassy whisk of ice under his butt. The stone opened up ahead of him, a steep, polar slide down into dark blue. Cold air swept into his lungs as the ice lunged by on both sides, stinging his eyes and hissing in his ears. He scrambled for some kind of control, gliding a hand out alongside him to steer down the center of the slide, cursing to the wind as he went.

The stone emptied out from under him again, and he tucked and rolled and landed on solid ground with great, gasping breaths. There was dampness cooling along the edges of his eyes from the tear of the air and his chest ached, but he barked out a laugh when the world caught up to him. That probably should not have been as fun as it was.

He didn’t have long to enjoy the moment, as daemons slid from the shadows of the icicles to greet him. Nyx and the rest of his retinue whooped and wheeled down the slide behind him, the crack of crystalizing weapons on their heels. Nyx swooped off the slide over Noct’s head and immediately descended on the nearest imp with kukris crossed. They made quick work of the mischievous little daemons.

Greyshire Glacial Grotto was beautiful, but treacherous. Dark, cerulean light filtered down along spears of icy stalactites, like thin, bony fingers. Mounds of ice glimmered off the cast of their flashlights, blues and whites and grays in the clouds of their breaths. It was slow-going after that, the ice encasing everything the further below-ground they trekked. Prompto was the first to slip.

“Whoa-oa-ah!” He clamped onto Gladio’s arm like a tree-branch. “Noct? Don’t suppose you have any ice skates or snow shoes or, I dunno, a blow-torch floating around the Armige-whats-it, do you?”

“I could fireball the place,” Noctis suggested – much to Ignis’s chagrin.

“As hot as that would be,” Nyx said with a nudge and a wink and a groan from the peanut gallery, “I think that we can manage. See?”

Nyx exemplified the “proper” way to walk on ice. Which was to take a few quick steps, spread his arms out to the side, and slide like a sock-footed movie-star along the ice. Even struck a pose of finger-gunning delinquency at the end. Ignis examined an icicle nearby as if he’d never seen this man in his life, Gladio shook his head and shuddered with laughter, Prompto snapped a pic, and Noctis just rolled his eyes. Nyx reached out for him again, shoulders straight, palm up-turned, as confident standing on ice as he was on a concrete sidewalk.

“Come on, you know you want to. You were laughing like a maniac on the slide down here.”

Noctis huffed out a cold, gray cloud of breath, eyes narrowing at the plane of blue ice beneath his feet. _Take your joys where you can get them, right?_ He took a running start, slow and steady, and hopped side-ways along the ice, as if he were skate-boarding through the city streets. He wobbled a little, arms wheeling for balance as he slid along with the momentum. He went careening into Nyx, the one anchor on a frictionless wasteland – and a spot of warmth in the frosty grotto that Noctis practically purred into once it enveloped him.

“Ha,” Nyx murmured in his ear when he had his arms around him. “Knew I could sweep you off your feet.”

“Don’t you think we’ve been there, done that already?” Noctis teased, looping an arm around Nyx’s back as they gradually glided along the ice, beckoning back for the boys to follow.

“We’re doing it again. Especially now that I can show off.”

Nyx stuck his tongue back at the boys when they didn’t immediately follow them along the slope, antagonizing them into trying the slow skate into the cavern. Noctis hit him in the chest, rolling his eyes and trying not to laugh.

“You’re going to get us killed, you know that?”

Nyx grinned, wholly confident in his own feet underneath him. “Been there, done that already, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> originally filled [here](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/169666662132/nyxnoct-skating), prompted from [this list](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/169438607162/winter-prompts)


	5. magic & misery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the astrals can't push them around anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going through my tumblr tag to find all the fic that I forgot to cross-post and I found [this one](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/165556235422/can-i-request-a-nyxnoct-fic-where-noct-and-nyx-get) from months ago. I think I didn't post it here because I wasn't quite sure if it fit in a series or could stand alone as a oneshot. While it's a little angstier than the general vibe of this little collection, I ultimately decided it best fit in here with the Dark at Night crew's adventures across Eos :)

He’s sparred with Noctis before, plenty of times. Play fighting, really. Love taps and warp tag and more flirting than fighting. It was hard to stay professional when there was no one around to put on a show for. Their sessions were often spent in the dusty Kingsglaive arena after hours, when all of the shrewd stares of soldiers trained to see everything that one didn’t want them to see, had closed to their own dreams in faraway apartments when night fell over Insomnia. The military arenas were left for the restless and the wanton, for dreams to be acted out in realism, for the daring to chance the danger of a sleepless security guard passing through or secretary staff on the late shift getting lost.

They’d practiced plenty during those midnight challenges. It wasn’t always the correct lesson.

Out on the open plateaus of the havens across Lucis, they didn’t have the luxury of privacy. Having an attentive audience to their every action demanded they abide by the laws of subtlety. Not something they’d ever gotten around to practicing at home.

Sparring had never been what it should have been, not practical exercises in survival or refining the form of wielding Noct’s swords or reigning in the phantom magic that left them both breathless at the end of every round. It was more of an indulgence of being in awe and admiring each other, eyes dark in the dim moonlight, watching how each breath expanded the chest and parted the lips and flushed the cheeks. Tasted the sweat on their brows and the heat off their skin and the tang of sparks and steel when blades collided. Stared, entranced, by the fluidity of limbs, the power simmering in each movement, the tautness of muscles as they moved in a stance, curled around a hilt, stalked across the sand.

Those hot-blooded nights at the Citadel felt like a lifetime ago. And sparring now felt so wrong, so _forced._ Nyx knew that Noctis wanted to do more, wanted to let loose in the ways he only could with Nyx and not with anyone else. Fighting with Gladio was for burning off aggression. Fighting with Ignis was for focusing his warring thoughts. If he fought with Prompto, it was only ever for fun, to distract himself from all the bad with a little bit of good. When he fought with Nyx, it was to trade with him the tensions that they could never tell anyone else. The things that were so hard to put into words. It wasn’t just a lust for one another, but a catharsis for all these secrets they could tell no one else but each other.

Sparring had become as intimate as the things they got up to in Nyx’s apartment. And this, whatever endless, spacious loop they were chasing each other around, wasn’t that.

He was frustrated. Noct was frustrated. This match was a culmination of various frustrations. It represented so much of what they’d lost in the fall. That arena, that apartment, all the places they could go to hide, all the ways they were when they were alone and didn’t have so much more of the world on their shoulders. Nyx had _died._ Noctis was _King._ Their greatest fears had all come true in a single night. And here they were, so happy to be together again, yet so terrified to touch each other lest they break the illusion of each other apart.

Finally, he taunted Noctis because he couldn’t take the sterility between them anymore, needed to force some kind of reaction for them both to initiate that intensity they used to have when it was just the two of them and the sing of steel at midnight.

“Wasn’t going beyond the Wall supposed to toughen you up?” he teased. “Seems like it had the opposite effect.”

“As if your runway walk is any more impressive?”

“I’m posturing, it’s supposed to intimidate you.”

“Yeah huh.”

Nyx gulped down hard on an annoyed growl. The dialogue wasn’t the same. Noctis would have disarmed him with a smile and a line if the guys weren’t lazing around the edges of the camp to hear. While there weren’t any secrets between them anymore about the romance between prince and glaive, this time the two of them used to share still wasn’t the same. He knew that Noct’s friends weren’t to blame. He knew that it was so much more than that.

“Should be intimidated,” he snapped. “I fought with those crotchety old farts in your fancy ring and still came out swinging. I’d be scared of me.”

Noct’s brows knit together across from him, hearing a truth that Nyx hadn’t meant to say. Nyx threw a kukri and warped to Noctis, blades clashing so Nyx didn’t have to hear that truth himself. That while he hadn’t feared the Lucii or the price they’d promised he would have to pay, he feared what was left of himself now that he hadn’t. When he awoke to a world in cinders, the bones of the city collapsed around him, and the people he’d sworn to protect dead and betrayed in his memory, he felt more fear than he had falling asleep to the sun.

He’d broken his promise. He’d destroyed more than he’d protected the Crown that had once saved him. He’d ruined what was left for his love to return home to. He hadn’t saved anything or anyone that he cared about. He said as much in every strike of his blade that Noctis parried. The phantom swords of the Armiger reminded him too much of those ancient ghosts in his head. The wards on the haven hummed too loudly like the fire that had burned him up from the inside-out. Nothing was the same because he’d failed to keep it that way. He’d lost their arena, their apartment, their hidden peace, their secret places, their family dinners in the King’s solar, their plans to get away from the city… He’d never wanted to leave it quite like _that._

“Nyx!”

Noctis threw him back from a flurry of strikes with a grunt, chest heaving and arms shaking from the effort to meet each blow. His eyes warred with fatigue and concern and more forgiveness than Nyx deserved. Reds and blues and violets filtered in confusion along the edges of his pupils, unable to guess at Nyx’s intentions. He didn’t know them himself. He thought he wanted Noctis to get angry at him. As angry as he was with himself, maybe.

“Are you gonna fight back or what?”

Noctis flinched and Nyx wished that he could take it back. There was another truth in that. This wasn’t the kind of tension they used to release on one another. Not the kind of truths they used to speak to each other without saying a word. He hated it. And Noct hated it. So much that the earth started to rumble and his brow creased in pain and he dropped his swords to the ether of the Crystal to hold his head in his hands.

Summoning the Astrals was an unpredictable occurrence. Titan was still a fresh wound gaping in Noct’s arsenal. He called to Noctis in violence and aided him at his own whim, not the King’s. He was barely learning how to control the Astral’s appearances, let alone the damage he left on the earth after his aid. His shadow loomed on the horizon, startling Gladio and Ignis and Prompto to their feet at the edge of camp.

Titan loped closer and closer, and Nyx wasn’t nearly as afraid of him as he should have been. He was afraid of what he’d done to Noctis to hurt him enough to inspire the Astral to confront them all. He was afraid that he’d ruined everything else with a simple sentence.

He was afraid that he couldn’t protect Noctis. He was afraid that he was going to break him, just like he’d broken his city. And he didn’t know how to say that to him. Didn’t know how to express that he wanted nothing more in this life than to stay by his side, but felt like he should be as far away from it as he could.

Maybe he should just let Titan take him in his fist and finish what the Lucii started.

Maybe he shouldn’t have underestimated Noct.

“Stop!”

The Astral was still miles away, but Noctis shouted out to him as if he were merely a few feet from the camp. He whirled around to face him in the distance, fists at his sides and heels digging into the stone. His eyes were crimson and full of wrath, teeth evenly clenched together in a wolven snarl. His silhouette was sharp, black as ink, and taller than Nyx had ever seen it before.

“I didn’t ask for you!” Noctis shouted at Titan. “I don’t need you!”

Titan loomed along the horizon, shoulders blinding the sun, celestial energy rumbling through the hills, moving through the trees in a harsh rustle. It felt like the boughs were leaning towards Nyx, leafy fingers reaching in to try snagging at his clothes. The earth felt like it could rise up and fold over him as effortlessly as an ocean wave. But Noctis refused the malevolent defense. The Prince stood his ground and barked back to some unheard curse.

“Go back! _I don’t need you!_ ”

The world growled, something fighting in the air and the grass that none of them could see. But Nyx could see Noct’s hatred for the Astral’s intrusion in the violence of how the god broke apart into stars and vanished against the setting sun. It was like a stone being thrown back at him, shattering him like a mirror. The earth stilled and the wind quieted and Noctis stood at the edge, tight with the rage of his control.

It was new for Nyx. All of it was. Phantom kings, elemental avatars, Noctis, his boy, so soft and smiling and stupidly sweet to him when he didn’t deserve it, rising amidst all of it with an anger they’d only ever whispered about in the waning hours of night before dawn. Noctis wielding his fears like one of his swords to protect himself from all of the things that wanted to use him. All of the things Nyx was so afraid that he couldn’t keep from hurting him.

“I’m sorry.”

Nyx’s voice felt small to his own ears. Noctis blinked and his eyes were blue again as he looked back at him.

“No, it’s fine, it’s my fault, I…”

“No. Not that. I’m sorry for…”

Nyx shrugged, eyes downcast to the rock beneath them. He was sorry for everything. For his failures in both the dead and the living. His failure to have faith in Noctis on his own. His doubt in his power and his ability to hold all the burdens of the world on his shoulders. Insomnia had shaken his faith in everything. Even the one thing he thought never could be called into question. He knew that Noctis wasn’t weak. He knew that he was so much stronger than anyone would ever be able to see. And yet… He thought he needed to protect him. And that if he couldn’t, Noctis wouldn’t protect himself.

He hated that the most. This new, wrong change in him. He hated that the Lucii had done this to him.

Noctis appeared in his space, wrapping his hands around his and ducking his head down to look him in the eye where Nyx was trying to hide them. More truths that only he could hear. Nyx could see it in his eyes when they met.

“It’s okay,” Noctis said for only him to hear, barely a whisper.

He hated that he didn’t believe him. He hated that Noctis could see that, too. Noctis gave a brief look to his friends at the edges of camp, a silent signal to give them some space. When they were distracted with whatever distant hobby they liked to indulge in, Noctis pulled Nyx into his arms and just held him. Like Nyx used to do for him in his worst moments. Just held his shattered pieces together until he was strong enough to hold them together himself.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured again, deep into his shoulder.

“I know. I am too. But we’ll be fine. I promise.”


End file.
